This Post is the second half of a Guide to American gun
politics. Last week (130119) the first half covered basic
Background and initial reactions to the Newtown shootings in
December. This week the second half notes January proposals for
gun reform and introduces some academic analysis of American gun
politics in general.

Thus the first third of this Post summarizes and discusses the
PROPOSALS for gun reform assembled by vice-president Biden and
endorsed by president Obama. The second third sketches some
academic analysis of the patterns of POLITICS that gun issues
produce. The last third notes academic analysis of the alternative
“FRAMINGS” that gun issues can receive.

References occur throughout this Post as relevant. Last week’s
Post provided a basic list of recommended readings. This Post
frequently cites an early skeptical analysis of the efficacy of
“gun control”: William J. Vizzard 2000 Shots in the dark: The
policy, politics, and symbolism of gun control. Landham MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 257 pages.

COMMENTARY: POLICIES 1

The first third of this section details Obama’s policy
proposals. The middle third discusses the technical feasibility of
some key proposals for improving the information available to
assist the regulation of guns. The last third addresses the
political feasibility of Obama’s proposals and their place in
Obama’s overall political strategy for his second term.

Overall, there is a political and policy paradox: public
revulsion at suburban gun rampages creates a demand to “do
something” about a problem that, realistically, gun policy can
little affect. This CAN provide an opportunity for progress in
related areas, such as staffing schools, funding mental health, and
limiting violence in entertainment. However, the difficult question
becomes, is demand to “do something” about suburban gun rampages
sufficient to spill over into doing something about the real
problem – chronic inner-city gun violence. (See Pastor Michael
McBride 130114 “Gun violence task force must address inner cities”
on The Congress Blog at thehill.com. Also Michael Cooper, Michael
Luo and Michael D. Shear 130115 “Obama gun proposal to look beyond
mass shootings” at nytimes.com.)

Obama’s proposals 1.1

Obama’s proposals fall into Ten Main Strategies and involve some
23 Executive Actions.

MAIN STRATEGIES. According to one good summary, Obama is
Pursuing Ten Main Strategies. Below I group them under three main
categories. (See Brad Plumer 130116 “Obama’s plan to reduce gun
violence.” Also Matt Vasilogambros 130116 “What are Obama's gun
control proposals? An easy guide” at nationaljournal.com.)

GUN SALES

1 Require a CHECK of ALL gun buyers for criminal
background.

2 Ensure that INFORMATION on dangerous individuals is available
for background checks.

3 Reinstate and strengthen 1994-2004 ban on ASSAULT
WEAPONS.

4 Restore the 10-round limit on magazines of AMMUNITION.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

5 Protect police by finishing the job of getting rid of
armor-piercing BULLETS.

Some of these proposals require congressional action, some not.
As discussed below, Obama is well aware that some of the ones that
require congressional action may not pass congress – particularly
not the Republican-controlled House, but even the
Democratic-controlled Senate.

EXECUTIVE ACTIONS. Accordingly, using his own executive
authority, Obama will immediately take 23 Executive Actions on guns
and gun violence. This certainly constitutes vigorous executive
action. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Obama has attempted
to keep these “executive actions” uncontroversial. That is, either
they fall well within the scope of what congress has authorized the
president to do, or they are simply administrative instructions to
subordinates within the executive branch. None of them are the more
controversial “executive orders” that have the force of law and
sometimes attempt to “stretch” executive powers. Republican howls
of “presidential over-reach”are overdrawn. This is particularly so
of the eccentric Texas congressman who wants to impeach Obama for
abuse of power. (See Josh Gerstein 130116 “Gun advocates shrug at
Obama’s executive actions” at politico.com. Also Ginger Gibson
130114 “Rep. Stockman threatens Obama impeachment over guns” on On
Congress at politico.com.)

The groupings below show the heavy emphasis of Obama’s executive
actions on Background Checks (six items), Law Enforcement (five
items), followed by Mental Health (four items). The categories are
again mine.

BACKGROUND CHECKS: INFORMATION AVAILABILITY

1 Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies
to make relevant data available to the federal background check
system.

2 Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to
the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may
prevent states from making information available to the background
check system.

3 Improve incentives for states to share information with the
background check system.

BACKGROUND CHECKS: FEDERAL GUIDANCE

4 Direct the Attorney General to review categories of
individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous
people are not slipping through the cracks.

5 Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run
a full background check on an individual before returning a seized
gun.

6 Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers
providing guidance on how to run background checks for private
sellers.

23 Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and
Duncan on mental health.

Technical feasibility 1.2

Two items among Obama’s gun reforms are more difficult and
important than their names convey. One of these is extending checks
on the backgrounds of would-be gun purchasers to a larger part of
gun sales. The other is resuming federal research – and funding for
private research – on the causes and consequences of violence
involving guns. Both of these items are important for increasing
the INFORMATION available to regulators. Recently, by conservative
congressional design, executive regulation has been “flying
blind.” These items involve two questions of “technical
feasibility”: Are the items themselves technically feasible? What
effect would their implementation have on the technical feasibility
of regulating gun violence? (On the overall technical feasibility
of Obama’s proposals, see Brad Plumer 130115 “Obama is rolling out
his gun proposals soon. Here’s what you need to know” and Brad
Plumer 130116 “Gun experts grade Obama’s proposals,” both on
Wonkblog at washingtonpost.com.)

EXTENDING CHECKS: Thus one item in Obama’s proposals that
requires explanation is the first of the ten main strategies:
“Require a CHECK of ALL gun buyers for criminal background.” The
current system requires such background checks only for the most
formal of gun sales, which are only a part of the total. Extending
the checks to a larger part of sales will help limit gun violence,
particularly by helping law enforcement trace transactions across
state boundaries, in order to identify criminals who are most
likely to commit gun violence. However, extending the checks very
far is technically almost impossible. (See Brad Plumer 130116
“Obama wants universal background checks for gun buyers. Is that
feasible?” on Wonkblog at washingtonpost.com.)

To understand why, we must briefly overview the current system
for regulating gun transactions. It focuses on a formally regulated
primary market but does not regulate a legal secondary market and
an illegal tertiary market. The government licenses dealers to buy
and sell in the primary market. However, licensed dealers also sell
from the primary market into the secondary market, and guns leak
freely from the secondary market into the tertiary market. Across
all three types of markets, legal and illegal sales of guns are so
intertwined as to confound enforcement. Besides, most people who
might want to use a gun can simply borrow one from someone.

RESUMING RESEARCH. Another item in Obama’s proposals that
requires explanation concerns RESEARCH (the seventh of the ten main
strategies and the fourteenth of the twenty-three executive
actions). In 2006 a Republican congress passed a law forbidding
federal support for research intended to promote gun control. Since
ANY research on gun violence could be construed as promoting gun
control, federal funding of such research virtually ceased. Since
most such research has depended on federal funding, research itself
virtually ceased. As a result, by the design of conservative
congresses acceding to the wishes of the Gun Lobby, evidence-based
policy making on gun matters has become impossible – ABSOLUTELY
DISGRACEFUL for the supposedly most scientifically advanced nation
on earth! Here are some of the things that we don’t know but MIGHT
now find out. (Obstacles to funding remain.)

How many guns actually exist in the United States?

How do guns get into the hands of people who commit crimes?

What percentage of gun owners even commit gun crimes?

Is there a relationship between gun ownership levels and
crime?

Are criminals deterred by guns?

Do limits on high-capacity magazines reduce the number of
deaths?

Does firearm licensing and registration make people safer?

How do gun thefts affect crime rates?

Does gun ownership affect whether people commit suicide?

What’s the best way to restrict firearm access to those with
severe mental illnesses?

Why do gun accidents occur? Who’s involved?

(See Brad Plumer 130117 “Gun research is allowed again. So what
will we find out?” on Wonkblog at washingtonpost.com, Plumer cites
Emily Badger 130116 “Questions About gun violence that we may now
be able to answer” at theatlanticities.com. Plumer also provides
other valuable links on this topic.)

Overall, because national gun legislation occurs only
infrequently, the national legislature neither maintains nor
commissions relevant expertise on such things as how guns are
actually used and how gun markets actually work . For example, the
haphazard way in which regulations have defined “bad” guns has
allowed manufacturers to make only nominal changes that have easily
moved problematic weapons out of the “bad” category into the
permissible. (Vizzard 2000)

Political feasibility 1.3

The simplest question about the political feasibility of Obama’s
proposals for gun reform is: can the ones that require
congressional legislation pass both chambers of congress? Some,
such as extending background checks, probably can: Even the NRA
supports them, since it diverts attention from guns to owners.
Other proposals, such as banning large ammunition magazines, MIGHT
pass the Democratic Senate but probably would NOT pass the
Republican House. Still other proposals, such as banning “assault
weapons,” might NOT pass even the Democratic Senate and certainly
not the Republican House. (See Sean Sullivan 130116 “What President
Obama proposed on guns. And what might actually pass Congress” at
washingtonpost.com. On the Senate, see Manu Raju and Ginger Gibson
130116 “Senate forecast for guns: Cloudy” at politico.com. On the
House, see Jonathan Martin and Jake Sherman 130116 “Why President
Obama's gun plan may be doomed” at politico.com.)

A slightly more complex question concerns legislative strategy.
Obama has the option of proposing one large bill that contains
everything he wants. However, he will probably choose to submit
separate bills, so that the more acceptable proposals can pass even
if less acceptable proposals fail. In particular, even though he is
proposing a ban on assault weapons, he may be prepared to sacrifice
that so that other proposals can pass. Then opponents of gun
control can defend a vote in favor of those proposals on the ground
that they defeated the ban on assult weapons. Thus assault weapons
could play somewhat the role that the “single-payer” option played
in health reform – something that had to be sacrificed, but whose
sacrifice facilitated passage of other reforms. (See Justin Sink
130117 “Carney: White House to pursue separate gun control bills
in Congress” at thehill.com . And, particularly, Ezra Klein 130117
“How (most of) Obama’s gun control plan can pass Congress” on
Wonkblog at washingtonpost.com.)

A larger question of strategy concerns Obama’s new approach to
negotiating policies and winning politics. During his first term,
Obama tried to conciliate Republicans in order to gain their
support, but they gave him no support whatsoever. Moreover, Obama
chose not to waste political resources by fighting to pass
legislation in the Senate that he knew could not pass in the House.
During his second term, evidently Obama intends to propose what he
actually wants and simply overwhelm Republican opposition.
Moreover, evidently he may be prepared to insist that the
Democratic Senate pass legislation that everyone knows can’t pass
the Republican House. The resulting contrast between chambers could
help dramatize to the public that it is Republicans who are being
intransigent and therefore help mobilize public opinion in support
of Democratic proposals. (Chris Cillizza 130116 “President Obama’s
new negotiating tactic: Stop negotiating with yourself” on The Fix
at washingtonpost.com. Glenn Thrush 130116 “Why President Obama
might choose to lose on guns” at politico.com.)

Nevertheless, that strategy carries risks for Obama and
Democrats. A classic strategy in politics is to choose issues that
unify your side and divide your opponents’ side. As noted in a
previous post (130112), some of the issues and appointments that
Obama is putting on the agenda for his second term – immigration,
fiscal crisis, disaster relief, a moderate Republican for secretary
of state – tend to divide Republicans. However, the gun issue is
one that divides Democrats. The reason is that, in 2006 and 2008,
Democrats recaptured congress from Republicans by running
relatively conservative Democrats in potentially Republican
constituencies. To win in those relatively conservative
constituencies, those Democrats had to support gun rights. Forcing
them now to vote for “gun control” could cause Democrats to loose
the Senate in 2014, as many Democrats believe that supporting gun
control caused them to do in 1994. (See Cameron Joseph 130117
“Vulnerable Senate Democrats balk at Obama’s gun control measures”
at thehill.com.

This vulnerability and ambivalence apply even – and particularly
– to the Democratic leader of the senate, Harry Reid of Nevada. As
a result, Reid has expressed skepticism about some of Obama’s gun
proposals. He wishes to stick to the rule in Obama’s first term
according to which Democrats do not use senate resources to pass a
bill that can’t pass the House. Meanwhile, of course, House
Republicans say they won’t bother to pass legislation that can’t
pass the Senate! Also Alexander Bolton 130117 “Obama push on gun
control puts Reid in tough political spot” at thehill.com.)

Meanwhile, Obama still has majority public support for his main
legislative proposals for gun reform. Universal background checks
are overwhelmingly popular (88% approval), limiting ammunition
magazines to 10 rounds substantially so (66% approval). Support for
reinstating the ban on assault weapons and for stationing more
police officers in schools is more modest (58% and 55% approval).
The problem is, how to bring national average opinion to bear on
legislators, particularly on legislators from districts where
opinion departs from that average. Please see 2.2 below on Missing
Movements. (Chris Cillizza and Scott Clement 130117 “President
Obama has the public on his side on gun proposals” at
washingtonpost.com.)

ACADEMIC ANALYSIS: POLITICS 2

This section asks to what extent political scientists have
EXPLAINED anything about the policy politics surrounding guns. The
first third of the section reprises the theme of how limited the
regulation has been that the USA has achieved over gun violence.
The middle third introduces a theme of “missing movements” that is
fundamental not only to American gun politics but to current
American politics as a whole. The last third of the section
discusses the relevance to gun politics of a classic theme in
American political science: that “policies make politics” and that
different kinds of policies make different kinds of politics.

Limited regulation 2.1

This subsection elaborates slightly on the low “technical
feasibility” of regulating gun violence in America. Regulation of
guns can address (1) carrying, storage, and use (2) access by
specific categories of “bad” persons (3) marketing and registration
(4) types of “bad” guns and (5) severity of sentencing for
violations of gun laws. Under the American division of authority
between the national and subnational governments, historically most
of these have fallen to states and localities to regulate. This
devolution has its advantages: practical needs and community
cultures differ drastically between, say, big metropolitan cities
and small rural towns. However, this devolution has also produced
inconsistent and lax regulation. Moreover, it makes the national
government a tentative and indirect “interloper” in a policy domain
in which post policy prerogatives are reserved to the states.
(Vizzard 2000)

As noted above, the current national system for regulating gun
transactions focuses on regularizing a PRIMARY MARKET for gun
sales. Regulations require national licensing of all gun dealers
and require those dealers to check the personal backgrounds of
prospective gun buyers by consulting government data bases. The aim
of the checks is to identify “bad” buyers such as convicted
criminals, the mentally unstable, or the underage, who should be
denied purchase. However, the existing regulatory regime has many
defects. (On these defects see Vizzard 2000.)

First, even as regards primary markets, regulation does not
provide a workable definition of “gun dealer.” Second, relevant
databases on potential buyers remain incomplete. Third, the law
does not require that data on transactions and equipment be
compiled into a national database that would actually assist in
enforcing regulations. (Proponents of gun rights fear that such a
database would amount to a national registration system that, one
day, might enable the national government to confiscate guns from
all owners.) Fourth, current regulation allows a huge “loophole,”
permitting sales at gun shows where background checks are not
required. Gun shows are only a part of a large unregulated
SECONDARY MARKET that accounts for 40%-50% of legal gun sales!
Fifth, current regulation does not address the illegal TERTIARY
MARKET of surreptitious sales by unlicensed sellers to unrecorded
buyers..

Missing movements 2.2

American politics currently suffers from an absence of mass
movements to push for LIBERAL “middle class” objectives, not just
in gun politics, but in most other policy domains as well. The
theme of “missing movements” is absolutely fundamental to the
present and future of American politics, particularly from a
progressive point of view. (For a journalistic account of “missing
movements,” see Hedrick Smith 2012 Who Stole the American
Dream? New York NY: Random House, 592 pages. Particularly
Chapter Three “Middle-class power: How citizen action worked before
the power shift,” 23-34 and Chapter Twenty-two “Politics: A
grassroots response: Reviving the moderate center and middle-class
power,” 410-426.)

Evidently Obama agrees, since he has just dispatched the
director of his election campaign and other key staffers to lead
grassroots mobilization BETWEEN elections to bring public pressure
on congress to pass his programs. Organizing for Action will “play
an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support
of important legislation” during his second term.

Launching the organization in conjunction with his second
inauguration, Obama wrote in an email to supporters:

“We may have started this as a
longshot presidential primary campaign in 2007, but it’s always
been about more than just winning an election. Together, we’ve made
our communities stronger, we’ve fought for historic legislation,
and we’ve brought more people than ever before into the political
process. .... Organizing for Action will be a permanent commitment
to this mission. We’ve got to keep working on growing the economy
from the middle out, along with making meaningful progress on the
issues we care about — immigration reform, climate change, balanced
deficit reduction, reducing gun violence, and the implementation of
the Affordable Care Act. .... I’m not going to be able to take them
on without you.” (Quoted in Glenn Thrush and Reid J. Epstein and
Byron Tau 130117 “Obama unveils 'Organizing for Action'” at
politico.com.)

As regards guns, this section elaborates slightly on the low
“political feasibility” of regulating gun violence in America. We
begin by noting the skeptical analysis of criminologist William
Vizzard, who noted that the liberal gun cause was a largely elite
affair (2000). We continue by reporting the critical analysis of
political scientist Kristin Goss, who explains that gun advocates
have mobilized their mass base as an effective political force but
gun critics have not. (Kristin A. Goss 2006. Disarmed : the
missing movement for gun control in America. Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press, 282 pages.)

As this Guide has stressed throughout, the kinds of measures
that American politics has succeeded in adopting to regulate guns
have been more politically symbolic than practically effective
(Shots in the dark, as William Vizzard calls them).
Because of inadequate mobilization of mass support, in order to
pass ANY control legislation, gun critics have had to make so many
concessions to gun advocates that the resulting measures have been
weak and inconsistent. Comprehensive regulation of all gun owners,
gun transactions, and gun equipment has been politically impossible
because it would mobilize too much opposition by too many
stakeholders. So legislation has tried to define a few gun owners,
sales, and equipment as “bad” in order to regulate only those,
while allowing their more numerous “good” counterparts to remain
unregulated. Such a narrowing is intended not only to minimize
political opposition but also to maximize enforcement efficiency,
by focusing enforcement on the most problematic persons. (Vizzard
2000.)

In effect elaborating the political side of Vizzard’s analysis,
Goss’s 2006 book Disarmed analyzes the relative absence
of a mass movement for gun control in America. She argues that
advocates of gun RIGHTS have done the mass political work necessary
to influence national legislation, while advocates of gun CONTROL
have not. Conservative gun advocates “started local” and framed
issues in a way that appealed to mass supporters. They proceeded
incrementally and made small gains that rewarded those supporters.
Liberal advocates of gun CONTROL pursued reforms at a national
level and framed the issues in elite terms that did not connect
with mass publics. They attempted large reforms and assumed it was
obvious that their cause was morally compelling and therefore did
not need ongoing small rewards to build mass support. This
“rational national” strategy relied on the persuasiveness of good
policies instead of the leverage of good politics. It was an inside
strategy without an outside strategy, and it failed.

Subsequently Goss has provided a similar explanation of the
failure of women’s rights advocates to gain passage of an Equal
Rights Amendment. (Kristin A. Goss 2012 The paradox of gender
equality: how American women's groups gained and lost their public
voice Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 256
pages.)

Policies make politics 2.3

One way to categorize policies is according to the pattern of
politics that they tend to generate.

In other words, “policies make politics.” Famously, in 1964, the
American political scientist Theodore Lowi posited that policies
are either distributive, regulatory, or redistributive. On Lowi’s
analysis, these different kinds of policies set up different
patterns of interaction between politicians and publics and tend to
be processed in different ways in different parts of American
political institutions. (Lowi, Theodore J. 1964. "American
business, public policy, case-studies, and political theory"
World Politics 16,4 (October) 677-715. A revised version
positing an additional “constitutive” type of policy is Theodore J.
Lowi 1972 “Four systems of policy, politics, and choice, Public
Administration Review 32, 4 (Jul-Aug) 298-310.)

DISTRIBUTIVE policies simply hand out short-term benefits to
political clients without much attention to longterm costs (where
the money is coming from). Both politicians and clients love such
policies, which can be arranged rather privately between particular
congressional subcommittees and particular political clients. From
the beginning, distribution has been the staple of American
politics. REGULATORY policies discipline some category of citizens
(such as polluting industries) to benefit all citizens (who want a
clean environment). Regulatory policies arose starting around 1900
largely to manage America’s suddenly industrialized economy.
Processing regulatory politics requires more principled
deliberation at higher levels within congress – major committees or
a chamber as a whole. REDISTRIBUTIVE policies take from some
citizens in order to give to other citizens. Classically this meant
taking from the rich to give to the poor, as the 1930s New Deal and
1960s Great Society succeeded in doing for a while. Since then
redistribution has increasingly been from the middle class to the
rich. Redistributive policies tend to involve strenuous debate
between large segments of society (capital versus labor, rich
versus poor) and to involve the very highest levels of the
political system, including the president.

Originally, Lowi treated mostly economic issues that
politicians and publics process in an instrumental and calculative
way. Lowi regards “social” issues as regulatory, since they involve
imposing particular behaviors on individuals, ultimately by
coercion. Later Lowi elaborated his framework to encompass the
“moral” aspects of socio-cultural issues, the aspect that causes
actors to process such issues in expressive and normative ways.
(See his preface to successive editions of Raymond Tatelovich and
Byron W. Daynes 2006 Moral controversies in American
politics, 3rd edition Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 292 pages.)

Lowi and his followers have classified the gun issue as such a
“social regulatory” issue. Following Lowi’s 1964 ambitions, the
editors of the relevant volume suggest a variety of patterns that
“social regulatory” policies display, including where within
American institutions they tend to be processed. Spitzer concludes
that gun politics does indeed display most of those
characteristics. (See both Spitzer’s chapter in the 2006 edition of
the Tatelovich and Daynes volume and the 2012 edition of Spitzer’s
own textbook on gun politics. The following is from Spitzer 2012,
16-17.)

Reordered, but in Spitzer’s words, these patterns are:

PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP plays a
relatively marginal role and operates primarily on the symbolic
level.

CONGRESS is more heavily involved in
this kind of issue than the president, but it tends to support the
status quo, often following the lead of state legislatures instead
of setting the course for the states.

The COURTS provide a key avenue for
defining and changing the issue.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES exercise
limited control and jurisdiction over the issue, and political
winds from Congress, the president and interest groups buffet these
agencies.

FEDERALISM defines the structure and
politics of the issue. That is, unlike many issues on which the
federal government has become the primary actor, state and local
governments continue to operate with a high degree of autonomy and
control, even in the presence of federal regulations.

The POLITICAL PARTIES generally seek
to exploit differences over social regulatory policy, with
Republicans using such issues to mobilize conservatives and
Democrats seeking to mobilize liberals.

SINGLE-ISSUE GROUPS are prevalent in
the politics of the issue, and they behave in an absolutist,
polarizing fashion; that is, they are singularly strident, they
seek and defend extreme positions, and they are reluctant to
compromise.

Rallying and mobilizing PUBLIC OPINION
behind change is difficult; at the same time, for change to occur,
it must be linked to and draw support from social/community norms
and values.

Most of this remains true and insightful for current gun
politics. Particularly noteworthy is that much of gun policy is set
at the subnational level and that mobilizing public opinion behind
significant policy change requires appealing to community values.
Current gun politics do starkly contradict one item: Presidential
leadership, far from being marginal and symbolic, has been central
to placing guns squarely on the national policy agenda. Moreover,
as reported above, the president himself has provided concrete
proposals for action, following the recommendations of his
vice-president and cabinet. Furthermore, recognizing that many of
those proposals will be difficult to get through congress, Obama
has taken some 23 concrete actions himself, using his executive
powers.

More broadly, I am not happy with the “social regulation”
classification of gun matters, either as a basically “moral” issue
or as a purely regulatory one.

As to “moral,” it is certainly true that the Right has succeeded
in defining guns as an Identity issue. But that definition is
partisan and tendentious, intended to supercede the fact that
regulating guns should be primarily a Security issue of public
safety and public health. Moreover, the Right’s definition is also
intended to obscure the fact that guns are also, to some extent, an
Economic issue: again, guns should be subject to regulation for
public health and safety just like any other commondity.

As to “regulatory,” certainly th egun issue is regulatory, but
it also has distributive and redistributive aspects – not only in
the moral aspect, but in their security and economic aspects as
well. For example, in the gun case, even the Identity aspect is
quite redistributive: conservatives fear that progressives are
taking the identity of America away from them and “redistributing”
it to progressives. The Security aspect is also quite
redistributive: Gun advocates became so insistent in the 1970s
because they feared that inner-city blacks were arming themselves,
redistributing security away from whites to blacks (who of course
saw it the other way around). Moreover, gun advocates now fear that
gun opponents want to take their security away from Them and
redistribute it to Others. The Economic aspect of gun politics, in
addition to the regulatory pattern posited above, may even have
some minor distributive patterns (protecting domestic gun
manufacturers from foreign competition and protecting local
employers from nationally-imposed costs.)

ACADEMIC ANALYSIS: FRAMINGS 3

From the point of view of societal function, there are three
main types of issues: SECURITY versus ECONOMY versus IDENTITY. It
is certainly true that, since the outbreak of “culture war” in the
1970s, American politics has processed guns as an ideologically
polarized “moral” or IDENTITY issue, as mainstream American
political science now treats it. However, guns differ from other
moral issues in that guns themselves are not an intrinsically moral
matter like abortion or gay marriage. Before the 1970s guns were at
least partly an ECONOMIC issue: gun lobbies helped craft various
economically protectionist measures to assist the gun industry and
even token gun controls to preempt more drastic controls. Before
THAT guns were largely a SECURITY issue: from the beginning of the
colonial period, settlers used guns as weapons against Native
Americans, during the Revolutionary period they used guns as
weapons against the British and, from the beginning of the
Republic, whites made sure that blacks did not have guns.

Security 3.1

Thus, in the first instance, arguably the gun domain centers on
Order functions and poses a SECURITY issue with a “security logic”
of threat and fear. Indeed, Spitzer’s textbook, which begins by
treating guns as a moral issue, ends up by arguing that their basic
dynamic is a “security dilemma” in which insecurity leads to
defensive measures that further heighten insecurity, and so on. In
politics, perhaps a variant of that is the dynamic according to
which defenders of gun rights view ANY regulation of guns as a step
toward their ultimate nightmare of total Confiscation and
Prohibition. The main analysis by a security professional (Vizzard
2000) identifies two contending “frames” in gun politics that I
would place in the “security sector,” at the micro-individual and
macro-political levels, respectively. (Vizzard identifies other
frames that, below, I place in other sectors, also at either micro
or macro levels.)

The frame used by most Americans is the micro-security CRIME
CONTROL FRAME elaborated by professional criminologists and
practiced by police, clearly a security issue. Putting guns in that
frame usually suggests that guns facilitate crimes by individuals
and therefore should be controlled to protect other individuals –
including police themselves, who strongly advocate gun control.
Nevertheless, within the crime control frame, opponents of gun
control are emphatic that “guns don’t commit crimes, people do.”
The actual relationship between guns and crime, and between actual
crime rates and public fear of crime, involves many fraught
questions. For example, conspicuous increase in crime raises public
fears, but even rather significant DECREASE in crime does not
necessarily REDUCE fears (as the large fall in crime in the late
1990s did not).

Overall, social science research hotly disputes the
relationships between level of guns and level of violent crime.
Some even argue that the relationship is actually inverse (John R.
Lott 1998 More guns, less crime : understanding crime and
gun-control laws. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 225
pages). Here “more guns” refers to variation across American
counties in the permissibility of carrying guns. (On Lott’s claims
see Glenn Kessler 121217 “Do concealed-weapon laws result in less
crime?” at washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker.)

This controversial research remains currently relevant because
even some commentators who are not committed advocates of gun
rights are now wondering whether, given the inability of government
to protect citizens from guns, government should allow citizens to
use guns to protect themselves. (For example, Jeffrey Goldberg
1212 “The case for more guns (and more gun control)” at
atlantic.com.) This is a standard argument of NRA, repeated at the
end of this week by its head: “The only thing that protects against
a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” So he recommended
more guns: An armed policeman in every school in America! But NOT
control of guns themselves! From this point of view, the preference
of most schools to be “gun free zones” is simply irresponsible and
actually reprehensible! (For the skeptical reaction of an opponent
of the gun control response to a previous gun tragedy, see Jacob
Sullum 120725 “Outrage is not an argument: Politicians should
resist demands to do something about guns in response to the Aurora
massacre” at reason.com.)

Other social scientists have found methodological faults with
research purporting to prove the protective benefits of guns and
themselves done research that has reached opposite conclusions.
These disagreements are often technical ones that this author
cannot evaluate. In any case, the conventional wisdom now purveyed
by mainstream media is that having a gun is more likely to result
in injury than in protection. For example, the mother of the
Newtown shooter legally owned guns, and those were what enabled her
son to kill her and others. (The chapter in Wilson 2007 on
“Statistics and firearms” provides a fair assessment of research
claims about the costs and benefits of guns in causing or
preventing violence.)

At the “macro-security” level is the SOVEREIGNTY/RIGHTS FRAME.
Again, this can be used to argue either for or against gun control.
Proponents of gun control COULD use the SOVEREIGNTY side of that
frame to argue in favor of gun control: the most basic
responsibility of a modern state is to maintain a monopoly of
coercion within its jurisdiction and thereby guarantee law and
order to its citizens. To achieve that, a state must control guns.
That is the usual position in Western countries. Nevertheless, in
America, politicians seldom emphasis that argument, because it
implies exactly what gun lovers most fear, that the government will
confiscate their guns. Meanwhile, opponents of gun control use the
RIGHTS side of the sovereignty/rights frame to argue that gun
control violates American tradition: in rebelling against the
British, Americans established the principle that citizens need
guns in order to defend themselves against “tyranny.” From the
sovereignty side, two anti-gun lawyers have recently examined this
pro-gun contention, arguing that – as one might expect! – gun
rights “insurrectionism” is incompatible with democracy (Joshua
Horwitz and Casey Anderson 2009Guns, democracy and the
insurrectionist idea. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan
Press, 274 pages.)

Identity 3.2

Guns can also become an IDENTITY issue, part of the “culture
wars” between America’s liberal coasts and its conservative
interior, and part of the accompanying partisan wars between
Democrats and Republicans. Vizzard recognizes both of these wars in
two of his other frames through which American politics views gun
issues: his micro-individual CULTURE FRAME and macro-partisan
SYMBOLIC FRAME. Identity can explain better than Security why gun
advocates are so adamant about not allowing restrictions on guns.
Moreover, as noted under BACKGROUND, both the regional-cultural
divisions and their correspondence to partisan alignments are
confirmed by Pew polls. Since neither side will subside, latitude
for tightening restrictions on guns is likely to remain small. Most
characterizations of gun affairs as a moral issue blame ideological
moralization for political polarization, implying the desirability
of more empirical approaches. However, a few authors make the
opposite point: Gun affairs DO involve significant moral
disagreements that actually can be obscured by purely causal
analysis. Such principled disagreements can be resolved only
through constructive moral debate. (See for example Christopher
Eisgruber in Harcourt ed. 2003.)

Guns are to some extent also an ECONOMIC issue. Certainly gun
companies and gun dealers want to make money, and of course their
desire to sell as many guns as possible contributes to the gun
problem. Some “gun control” measures may have been introduced less
to protect the public from guns and more to protect domestic
manufacturers from foreign competition. Protectors of the gun
industry may even have introduced lax regulations in order to
preempt more stringent ones. Moreover, the industry has been able
to forestall regulation of many products that constitute hazards to
public “health and safety,” as increasing liability suits against
gun companies claim In 2005 the gun industry even almost obtained
national legislation protecting it from such suits! One might think
that the leading gun interest lobbying group, the National Rifle
Association, is simply a “front” for the industry and largely
funded by it. It is true that the NRA and the industry cooperate
closely, and that the industry does contribute to NRA. But in fact
the NRA is funded mostly by many small contributions from its many
committed members, and its main asset is actually not its money,
but its ability to mobilize so many members to vote one way or
another in elections.

Economy 3.3

Another sense in which guns can be regarded as having an
“economic” logic is Vizzard’s PUBLIC HEALTH FRAME. As he says, the
logic of that frame is antithetical to the sovereignty frame:
“instead of law and rights... the language of utility, risk, and
social costs.” (9). So perhaps guns can be analyzed as an ordinary
economic issue after all. Nevertheless, few other Economic products
produce such spectacular tragedies, after which most other products
are regulated. Arguably only the Security – and particularly the
Identity – aspects of the gun issue fully explain the difficulty of
getting gun issues onto the political agenda.

(For criticism of the gun industry see Tom Diaz 1999 Making
a killing: The business of guns in America. New York NY: The
New Press, 258 pages. For an update on the trend toward marketing
increasingly lethal weapons to civilians, in order to generate new
sales, see Tom Diaz 2013 (June) The last gun: Changes in the
gun industry are killing Americans and what it will take to stop
it. New York NY: The New Press, 224 pages. For reaction
against the gun industry immediately after Newtown, see Brad Plumer
and David A. Fahrenthold 121218 “Gun industry recoils from horror”
at washingtonpost.com. On liability suits, see Timothy D. Lyton
ed. 2005Suing the gun industry: A battle at the crossroads of
gun control & mass torts. Ann Arbor MI: University of
Michigan Press, 418 pages.)

总访问量：博主简介

韦爱德Edwin A. Winckler (韦爱德) is an American political scientist (Harvard BA, MA, and PhD) who has taught mostly in the sociology departments at Columbia and Harvard. He has been researching China for a half century, publishing books about Taiwan’s political economy (Sharpe, 1988), China’s post-Mao reforms (Rienner, 1999), and China’s population policy (Stanford, 2005, with Susan Greenhalgh). Recently he has begun also explaining American politics to Chinese. So the purpose of this Blog is to call attention to the best American media commentary on current American politics and to relate that to the best recent American academic scholarship on American politics. Winckler’s long-term institutional base remains the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University in New York City. However he and his research have now retreated to picturesque rural Central New York.